8.20.2006

The ebb and flow..

Over the last couple of weeks I decided to make a run over to the boat to play in their noon NL tournament. It was the first time I'd been to the boat since they opened up the card room. I was rather impressed with the overall layout & design of the room. The staff seemed to be rather competent and surprisingly nice for overworked & underpaid casino staff.

Their noon tourney is a 80+15 dollar buy-in with no rebuys, this one entertained 38 players, which from what I hear is about typical for noon on Wednesday.

Why is there always a WPT wannabe at my table? (well I guess it could be that they are at every table). First hand, he's UTG all in for 2K, with monster blinds of 25/25. He smiled & pulled his shades down (after half of the table had already acted) I peeked at my cards only to find....is the suspense killing you??... 7-2os

After inwardly fighting an evil impulse to call & hope the flop helped (all of which took 20 seconds) they hit the muck, in all of their hammer glory. No one called & WPT raked the pot, as he reached for the chips his tattoo peaked out from under his shirt sleeve & I believe it read "Gus Hanson is God"

Onward, after another orbit around the table it was pretty clear that the guy two to my left was going to be the table bully. He had a gruff middle eastern look to him & seemed to know everyone in the room (including the room managers). He had already been in or overplaying most of the hands thus far.

I'm the button, two early limpers & the gruff middle eastern in the pot I look down at A-j & pop a standard 3x raise at them. MiddleEastern calls without batting an eye, the other limpers bow out. Flop comes A-Q-Q not the best. MiddleEastern checks & I put out a 1/2 pot bet, he pauses & pushes all-in. Great, I've seen him overplay & splash around with some pretty bad hands thus far but not to this extreme. My gamble is telling me to call but my head is telling me to fold. I muck and MiddleEastern flips up....is the suspense killing you yet??....7-2os.

After hearing the poker gods laugh hysterically for what seemed to be 15 minutes straight, having a total stranger walk over to me & try to revoke any blogger hammer playing privileges I once had. We played on.

I managed to pull down a couple of decent pots & did a lot of folding. I so wanted revenge on MiddleEastern but alas he was knocked out by a solid player, remember kids kickers count!

We dwindled down to the final table of 9 & during the first break at the final table I swear to god I was the big blind twice in a row (before & after the break) but they had already switched dealers & no one else could remember (or didn't want to).

We played a few hands & with a raise & re-raise pre flop we had out first victim, 7-7 vs A-Qs, the flop brought a Queen & the river brought an Ace just for measure.

For this tourney they were paying the top 5 spots, & we were now down to 8. I was the second shortest stack at the table and finally after what seemed like being card dead for days I looked down to find 10-10 in late position. Easy play at this point of the tourney, ( I can't remember the exact total I pushed in for but it was at least 3x the blind) .

Hello 10's let me introduce you to the Big Blind he's sitting just over there...he's not only the big blind but he has Aces, let me escort you to the exit...this way sir (although I nearly rivered a straight on him). Hmmm let's see 8th place gets you...a sharp stick in the eye.

On the way out I figured to splash a few chips around on the -EV games & see if I could get lucky. I did & walked out a 5 dollar winner (covering the cost of the tourney & almost covering the cost of Chipotle for lunch.